Congestion delayed travelers 79 million more hours and wasted 69 million more gallons of fuel in 2003 than in 2002, the study said. Overall in 2003, there were 3.7 billion hours of travel delay and 2.3 billion gallons of wasted fuel at a total cost of more than $63 billion.

"Urban areas are not adding enough capacity, improving operations or managing demand well enough to keep congestion from growing," the report concluded.

Honolulu became the 51st city where the average motorist lost at least 20 hours a year because of rush-hour traffic delays. The tropical paradise capital joins such congested areas as Washington, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago — and Virginia Beach, Va., Omaha, Neb., and Colorado Springs, Colo.

Tim Lomax, a co-author of the Urban Mobility Report, told the AP that the soft economy and slow job growth in 2003 meant that congestion didn't worsen as quickly as it would have during better times. "The upside of a slowdown in the economy is the congestion didn't get worse very quickly," Mr. Lomax said.

In seven of the 13 major cities — Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, New York, Houston and Philadelphia — the annual delay per rush-hour traveler actually fell slightly.